“I found a way to incorporate coding in my project.”
Juwell Forde-Hadley, from Grace Snell Middle School in Loganville, Georgia, was recognized with the 2023 Broadcom Coding with Commitment award at the Gwinnett Regional Science, Engineering + Innovation Fair for coding to improve waste collection.
Broadcom Coding with Commitment recognizes students in grades 5-8 who combine STEM learning with coding to solve a community problem they care about that aligns with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
Juwell’s project, The Garbage Collection, applies to several of the UN goals including #6 Clean Water and Sanitation, #11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, #14 Life Below Water, and #15 Life on Land.
“Pollution is a big problem,” said Juwell. “We need to work together to improve how we collect and discard waste. Manual labor is the most common way, and our local sanitation workers do heavy lifting. I believe a robot can help this problem and keep our parks, highways, and beaches cleaner without the heavy lifting.”
Juwell built a robot that moves to collect trash, wirelessly controlled by an App on his phone. Scott Cummings, Senior Principal Program Manager for the Residential Broadband Group for Broadcom Inc., was one of the volunteer judges who interviewed Juwell and visited his school to bestow his prize.
“His exuberance and excitement over learning how to control the robot with an App was compelling,” said Scott. “Juwell could not wait to show me how the phone App worked, and I think his passion for coding will grow.”
Basic Coding is a 21st Century+ skill that girls, under-resourced, and underrepresented youth need to become digitally literate and compete for highly skilled jobs in emerging industries built on technologies of the future.
“Coding will be inescapable in the future, and we are seeing more young people using code to solve problems that they are passionate about,” said Scott. “There is a great need to enable students to enter a future world where coding will be a required language needed to achieve success, and Broadcom Coding with Commitment seeks to encourage and enable students for this future world.”
Juwell and Scott Cummings at the Gwinnett Science Fair
The 45th Annual Gwinnett Fair featured over 600 student projects across 21 categories and is one of the largest Regional Fairs in the United States. For more information, visit https://www.gwinnettsciencefair.com/.
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Raspberry Pi has free resources to help anyone learn how to code and teach basic coding. Visit the Projects site to get started.
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